Self-employed blogging

As for earning a living, Kottke has a plan for that, too. His readers will support him. At least he hopes they will. Kottke does not intend to seek advertising revenue; he plans to depend solely on reader contributions.

On Tuesday, Kottke posted a letter asking for donations and a link readers can follow to make payments using PayPal and major credit cards. Whether they’ll provide enough to support a single person on more than ramen noodles has yet to be determined.

While I wish Kottke nothing but great success with this, I am doubtful this will pay off. Why? Because I know I, a longtime Kottke reader, will likely never donate, or only donate very intermittently. This isn’t because I am a scrooge, or because I don’t think Kottke’s site is worth my money, but rather because his is only one of well over a hundred blogs that my news-reader aggregates for me. If I had to pay every one of those blogs, it would effectively break the internet for me.

Usually, I skim through posts in my aggregator, and ones that interest me, I click on, load in Safari and read. Then I might click on an ad or two. That costs me nothing but a little bit of time, but donating costs me money.